In 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, aboard Freedom 7. Freedom 7’s suborbital mission lasted 15 minutes, 22 seconds and reached an altitude of 186 kilometers (116 miles). Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin was the first human in space, having orbited the […]
If you’re tired of viewing PDF documents via traditional reader software which simply scrolls up and down pages, you may be interested in taking a look at this innovative freeware from Web Stunning. Flipping PDF Reader will transform your PDFs into flipbook format where turning
Flipping PDF Reader: A fresh & innovative way to view PDFs Read More »
In 1989, NASA launched Magellan to Venus. The Magellan spacecraft was named after the sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer whose expedition first circumnavigated the Earth. It arrived at Venus on August 10, 1990. Learn more at http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/magellan/fact.html
The news that Microsoft is revamping it’s Windows Live range of software came as a bit of a surprise to me. Although, with the emphasis in Windows 8 redirected toward Metro and mobile apps, in retrospect it should have been expected. I am really dirty
Windows 8 precipitates a revamp for Windows Live Read More »
In 1978, the first documented spam email was sent. A marketer at the now-defunct computer firm Digital Equipment Corporation sent an email to 393 users of Arpanet, the computer network that eventually became the Internet. The recipients were not happy. Read more at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13777
Sophos, the highly regarded U.K. security software company, has just announced the discovery of a serious privacy leak emanating from the popular Firefox add-on ‘ShowIP’. According to the Mozilla add-on page, there are currently 169,000 people utilizing ShowIP. Here is ShowIP’s offcial description: “Show the
Popular Firefox add-on raises serious privacy concerns Read More »
So you’ve totally got this really awesome, super-new idea that no one has ever had before: sweet. And now you want to share it with everyone on all of your sites and networks: totally. Tweet it. Facebook it. Press it into a word. Drop it
In 1981, Radio Shack re-released Model III TRSDOS 1.3 with 2 fixes Originally released on May 1st, TRS-DOS was able to accept input/output commands that worked with disk files rather than the cassette tapes that were used by most other TRS-80 systems. Learn more at
Ah security, one of the most widely discussed computer related topics across the planet. Start a new thread on any forum and label it something like “What is your security setup?” and you’re almost certainly guaranteed a lively response – everyone, it seems, likes to
Do outbound firewalls really offer any substantial benefits? Read More »
In 1964, the first BASIC computer program was run at Dartmouth. BASIC stands for Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. It went on to be the most widely used computer language in the world. Learn more at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~vox/0304/0503/basic.html
Though, technically, not ‘tech news’, I think this is pretty interesting. Paul Miller of The Verge, is off the Internet for a year, starting today. No social media, no Internet, no gaming. He’s going ‘old school’ — libraries, dumbphone, thumb drives (if they can be
To launch the high quality TV channel TNT in Belgium we placed a big red push button on an average Flemish square of an average Flemish town. A sign with the text “Push to add drama” invited people to use the button. And then we
In 1993, the source code for the World Wide Web was released into the public domain. The directors of CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucleaire) made it freely available to anyone, without licensing fees. This is considered by some as the single most important
In 1813, rubber is patented. J. F. Hammel received the first U.S. patent related to rubber for an India rubber varnish which made shoes waterproof. Read more about the history of rubber at http://www.rubber.org/100th-anniversary2
